Floyd Roland

Mr. Speaker, at the earliest opportunity I rise on a point of order from the events of yesterday’s Committee of the Whole discussions, under section 23(i) of our Rules of the Legislative Assembly, where a Member imputes false or hidden motives to another Member.

Yesterday in Committee of the Whole Mrs. Groenewegen, in the unedited Hansard of Wednesday, October 8, 2008, page 62, in questioning the Finance Minister, asked this question: “was the MLA who approved the negotiated contract the MLA for Inuvik, the Premier and the Chair of the Finance Management Board?”

Mr. Speaker, I would say that...

Mr. Speaker, the Building Canada Fund process is in the system with the Minister responsible for the infrastructure department, Minister Michael McLeod. He committed, through the process, to continue to do this work. I can’t say if we’ll have something absolutely in place by December. The next number of meetings that need to occur between the Department of Transportation and the community are going to be the critical ones to look at how they would proceed on the preliminary engineering and scope of project and at that point decide how they would fund that.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The motions of this House do carry weight. We review our options on an annual basis and weigh out, with the funding available, what projects can proceed.

On a specific gravel source to Aklavik, the Member raised this issue with me, as well, in the last session. I sat down with the Ministers on our side and committed them to work with the Member in the community. I understand the appropriate Ministers went into Aklavik this summer, had a meeting, and there were ongoing discussions there. There was a commitment to look at, as the Member pointed out, through the Building...

Mr. Speaker, the department is going to work with the community. They’re talking about trying to come up with the funds through the research and development portion of the Building Canada Fund, and that work will be ongoing.

As for me committing to taking a project and putting it into the plan, we know that we work with Members of the Assembly through the business plan process, and I wouldn’t say that I personally or as Premier could put a project in there without proper consultation.

I think this work we talked about is going to help us prepare for the next stage, and that is research...

I am aware that the department is working with the community. I understand, in fact, that a meeting will be held in the community next week, I believe on the 15th of October, to have further discussion in this area. At that point, they’ll have to decide how they can move this further ahead.

Mr. Speaker, first things first. We need to get our house in order, and we’re doing that. Again, I’m glad to know that the price of the movie is $30. We can work with the appropriate departments to try and make sure that we get this information and the movie out to as many students in our schools as we can. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to advise Members that the Hon. Michael McLeod will be absent from the House today, tomorrow and Thursday to attend the Provincial and Territorial Ministers responsible for Housing meeting in Ottawa.

This was one of the ones that was communicated to Ministers, and those letters were forwarded to Members of the Assembly. The approaches to regionalization of government was one of those. We haven’t put the energy into that file, because most of the energy has gone into the Refocusing Government initiative.

In my Budget Address back in May I also referenced that this was work we would be looking at. There hasn’t been a lot of energy put into that, as we were, again, putting the energy into Refocusing Government and a number of the other initiatives. We still have to come up with the terms of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are a number of initiatives and times that I’ve communicated to Members of the Assembly and to the public regarding the actions we are undertaking as a new government and the direction we are trying to set and some of the changes.

For example, Mr. Speaker, in the Budget Address I gave information on the fact that we would be dealing with the strategic initiative committees. In the letters that I sent to the Ministers on their mandates, I copied those letters to the Chair of P and P and outlined all the initiatives there. Building Our Future, Refocusing Government...

Mr. Speaker, I think the fact that some of our debate in this House is about having the proper consultation, and the approach we use, and the change we need to see here in the Northwest Territories…. An example of some of that change is that earlier today Minister Bob McLeod announced the SEED policy, the program coming into effect helping small businesses in our communities.

It’s that type of approach that we see happening, yet we realize we still have some traditional economies out there that we need to continue to support, like the trapping program and trying to get back into, for example...